


And the rest is rust and stardust

by boxerzayn



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Full of happy flashbacks, Harry left him you see, I might add a part two, Louis doesn't know it but he's hanging out with the spiders in his bathroom, M/M, this is quite sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 21:02:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1177895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxerzayn/pseuds/boxerzayn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And they never thought winter would hit them. And they never thought anything would matter other than them, and their shared jackets, and their shared, quiet laughs.<br/>The truth is that nothing much else than that matters for Louis, still.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the rest is rust and stardust

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the quote of Andrea Gibson whom i love dearly

"I am missing you most in the silence between songs on my favorite records. Sometimes it takes so long for the music to start."  
Andrea Gibson

 

Louis takes a walk at eleven o'clock in the copper-green-gray morning. London is rainy today, but blurry and flat instead of shiny. His cigarettes are wet when he tries to light one under a roof down on Picadilly. Soggy fags crumble under the strained back bones complicatedly put together inside his hand. His skin feels soggy too, and he's terribly tired, but in the way you do sometimes -- when it seems like no towels or fireplaces and no soft pillow 12-hour sleep could help you.  
He pulls the jacket tighter around him, and it's too big, but it had to be. Him and Harry bought it to share, and they never thought one of them would leave. And they never thought winter would hit them. And they never thought anything would matter other than them, and their shared jackets, and their shared, quiet laughs.  
The truth is that nothing much else than that matters for Louis, still.  
But it's february. And he's alone. And it's wet.

Stepping into the apartment, it feels cold and empty.  
The truth is that it is.  
For some reason, some spiderweb quiet reason, it's so cold. Like Harry drained all the colour and light in it, leaving. The way some of the water sinks away when you step out of a bathtub.  
Bubbles colapsing as you turn on the lightbulb and start flooding the water down the sink.

(It was a warm bubble bath with the secret nudity, soft bodies, hair floating beautifully under water. It was wet and warm and their laughes used to echo over the surface of their tiny sea, in their tiny bathroom.

Romantic long baths are so hazy. The water turns cold so slowly. But it does.

Nobody knows why it turnes out like this. There were spiderwebs in the corners of the bathroom, I suppose, lurking.  
Maybe Louis shouldn't have cleaned them out when he drained the flat of Harry's smell.  
You've got to listen to what the spiders have to say.  
They were watching every slow dance, musicless, in the small space between the crackeling bathroom walls.

There was no way Louis could have noticed, nor understood, what was changing. In a bathtub time always seems as still as the water.

He was too busy kissing the water off Harry's mouth to notice all of their twenty fingertips wrinceling up and falling off.  
There was limp flesh floating around in the water like dead fish, and he was still kissing Harry's mouth and his wet neck.

The truth is that there was no way Louis could have noticed their shared ocean slowly turning red. Only the spiders from their secret cieling webs could see the temperature dropping and the blood dripping.)

  
For the first time in months Louis pulls out his painting kit. Old, rusty woodrn brushes. Plump small bottles of actryllic paint. It's three o'clock when his quietly small, undry hands have soaked in actryllic and the canvas has long, broad bullets of colour along it. The motive is nothing. Is life. Is drowning.

He hangs the painting on their wall-- no, the wall, where Harrys favourite photos used to hang. Indie shot, fainty blurry, colourful or black-and-white pictures of Kate Moss and Mick Jagger and all of Harry's other favourite people.

(The spiders in the secret corners of the white, sad apartment -- what did they think of this? Did they sigh and shake their small spider heads and say No, Louis, dear, don't carve the curve of Harry's hands into your chest. The winter is coming.

Someone should have.)

The picture-wall, the one that used to contain all the culture Louis loved so badly because Harry did, the empty wall, maybe the saddest one in the whole empty apartment, is after a week filled with new paintings.

Louis makes them in all different colours, but mild ones, kind ones, sad ones. There are no real fingures in them, no words, no shapes, no letters, just feelings. Memories, blurry and storm-drenched, doomed, like he looks at them now.

(It's just a breakup, one of the spiders whispers, looking at Louis washing the soap off his body, water splashing un-playfully around in the small bathroom.

But Harry was special, another spider says, and it's the truth. And it's not a secret. And Louis cries.)

  
"These are really good," Zayn tells him, strolling around in the dirty, pale living room where Harry used to live with Louis. Inside Louis. Between Louis.

"Oh, you know, just something to fill up space with."

They smile at eachother over beer in the late february sun. The thing is that even though Harry used to, and still does, take up most of the space inside Louis, there has, and will be, other things than him Louis enjoys to do. He can still hang out with Zayn, have their quietness it took ages for them to find.  
For Louis to find.

They eat at a cramped, warm chinese restaurant around the corner Zayn likes. Louis curls his foot around the other boy's, platonically, needily. Zayn's all slow looks that taste like You're okay, right?

Louis answers Yes by drinking only one glass of wine and falling alseep with purposedly light eyelids. Not the crumbled shut ones that sadness and heartache crushes shut. Zayn stays the night. He smells of smoke and nothing like fruit. It's good.

(Allthough this can't go on forever. Life is not black-listable. There will be bananas yellow and bursting, the ones Harry loves so dearly, everywhere.  
There will be bathwater, brown strands of too-long hair sinking to the bottom of the tub. Louis will have to pick them up.  
He will have to listen to the spiders gossip secrets in their webs.)

The next day is a sunday. It means no work for neither Louis or Zayn, and they decide to sit in. The rain is pouring off the roof in floods and they look at old photographs.  
Harry and Louis shared a polaroid-camera Louis' mother got them as a moving in present.  
Harry got the camera and Louis all the old photos. It's stupid.  
The truth is that Harry is a better photographer. Louis' more of a painter.

There are alot of photos of the apartment. Louis had found the walls so white and beautiful, so fresh, he remembers. Hell, it wasn't long ago. He was so happy.

See, it comes to him in flushes, like water falling onto his skin the exact pressure Harry used to have, kissing his tanned skin.

The non-secret is that they met the 9th of July during lunch in a small town in the states. It was all greens and grease and dirt like Louis had imagined it, the american suburns. It was lovely. Movie-like. Harry was like a copy of a young film star with leather and glamour following him faster than his own shadow. The flannels tugged to his body like gold hangs onto a statue. And that was what he was, back then, Harry -- a statue. A photograph. A piece of art.

It's a bad habit Louis has, taking -- no, misstaking -- people for art.  
Harry is this complicated combination of warmth and weapons, he's a puttering fire of kindness.

(And Louis still thinks so well of him..., the spiders whisper.

But did he think it would work out because of Harry's naive good heart? You can't bring a boy who ran away from England to the American milkshake desert back to London and expect him to stay.

Louis would do good with all the truths, secret sentences, harsh words, saved up in the spider webs.)

  
Zayn walks home through the wet city, copperstones gleaming like jewelry under his feet as he rushes over the street. Louis waves but his best friend is already out of sight and his mind is repeating memories like an old vcr.

They met the 9th of July during lunch. Louis knows this because of his never-ending notes in his journal. Scribbled down things in a coffeestained book. Words like I think I love him. He is a sunset unfolding before my eyes. We are driving on pavement in the morning but I am on clouds and there is a sunset in the car.

He still writes in his journal. The dates are one day ahead than the one he's in, bwcause it's always past 1am in the morning and with the lightbulb still on the day has always swiched over to the next. There's not much to write now, though. It's true that the only fuel for words really is pain and happyness. He's not happy. Not in pain, either really. He isn'y hurting, only sometimes. Mostly he seems to live in a forever-going numbness. In the absenve of joy. In the land of the gray colours and the coughy dust.

(When it hurts though, it hurts bad. Hits the air from his lungs sometimes, the Harry-shaped fist wich is the only thing that fits in between his ribs, the only thing that can pry through.)

As march rolls in over England all he writes is short, flowery words about the sky. The colour of it. And the taste. The feel.  
The first month of spring seems motivated. Happy. Flowers pop up in the fleshy green parks and the sun is out more often than not. Sometimes Louis thinks the coty drowns him in the endless shower of water, but days like these it's a garden of metal and stone that is undislikeable.

He meets Harry on the 15th on picadilly. Louis is smoking on a bench, and this is his favourite part of London to smoke. And Harry knows this, remembers this, Louis can see it on him.

"Hello," Harry says, cherry voice long and kind. Endlessly familiar. Sounds like their apartment. Terribly different from the spider voices trickeling around there nowadays.

"Hey," Louis breathes, like the words have been violently knocked out of him. There's alot of violene, burnt nothings, between them.

"Can I have a fag?" Harry says, lean film star body looking so kind and so endearing.

Louis means to say yes, and Harry gets this or decides to have one anyway, because he sits down, but all he can ask is "Why did you leave me?"

He lights the cigarette for Harry. "Why are you still in England? I thought you needed to get away. Because you could have just gone on a trip, Harry, I-"

Harry knocks heads with him gently. His hair is so soft.  
"It's spring, Louis. I've been away already."  
Louis smiles faintly. Harry's sweet, sugar sweet, honest sweet.

He has to try to not be sweet, Harry. I suppose that's the difference with them. Harry's sweet leaks out of him like water through an over-filled cloud.

All the sugar in Louis is crystalized, diamond shaped.

"Hey-- I have some photos at the, your, flat, Louis. That i'd like to have."

Louis looks at the other boy. He's so besutiful it's chocking. How could he live with this person? The sound he makes when he pronounces Louis' name is beautiful. It's a flower. It's a song.

So they walk to the apartment together in the bright, cold London air. The sun is shining on the grease in Harry's hair.

"Nice paintings," Harry says, runner dog body twisting around in the room.

"Thanks."

For a moment the walls look the golden white they did when the two of them mooved in. It's been almost two years and Harry lights up the room and Louis is convinved it suits it.

But Harry's no lamp. If something, he's a torch you bring with you to the desert. He's on the run.

Harry chooses some of the photos. The ones that are the most bohemian, and visually pleasing, Louis thinks.

(The truth is, because it's a box full of truthes, this apartment-- is that he chooses the ones who remind him the least of Louis. The ones of his celebrety-wall when it as first was finished. The ones of their view through the kitchen window. Over the parks and roofs, copper and iron and water.

And the spiders whisper in their webs, washed away but forever living in the bathroom, because the truth is, that it's a house for them and not for boys in love, this apartment.)


End file.
